11 Meeting Her Parents

Eevee immediately rushed back to the Grass House and began calling out to the others as loudly as he could. As soon as he reached the house, he dashed inside and knocked over the pile of rocks in the living room that was supposed to act as a sort of crude alarm, while continuing to cry out to the others.

     Asmond and the other Searchers immediately jumped up from their beds at the sound of all of those rocks crashing down. Rushing quickly outside, where the other three were already on guard in front of the house, he took a look into the distance. He could see them. Two silhouettes about the size of Espiria were walking side by side towards their direction.

     He sent out Happiny and Seedot to the right side and Torchic and Squirtle to the left. Eevee and Espiria stayed by his side, while waiting for the two to approach. Asmond was glad that he hadn't needed to convince Squirtle to go out. Asmond suspected Squirtle was used to fighting for his life and considering our numbers he probably wasn't worried.

     Espiria dashed out about ten meters in front of Asmond and took a combat ready stance. Eevee stood about one meter in front of him in a similar stance. Once the two were about forty meters away, Espiria used her telepathy, commanded them to stop, and asked them why they were in this territory. The two Pokemon stopped and sat down and then said, "Leafeon" "Vaporeon."

     *They're saying they don't want to fight and they just want to talk.* Espiria translated.

     "How did you know that we were here? Aren't your territories all the way on the other side the grassland?" Asmond asked.

     "Va- Vapor- Vaporeon"

     *He says that he had seen a few of us from the ocean on several occasions, while hunting outside his territory. He also says that last night he saw us speaking with Squirtle and became curious.*

     Asmond was never more curious about how it was that Pokemon communicated than right now, because it hardly seemed like the sounds Vaporeon had made could possibly mean all of that. Not to mention they're just saying the same sounds over and over just in pieces. If those sounds work like Human words shouldn't there be more combinations. 'Right now isn't the time for that, though. I'll have to come back to it later.'

    "Did you really come all the way out here just because you were curious? What exactly do you want to talk about?"

     "Leafeon- Leaf- Leafeon"

     After several minutes of back and forth, it eventually came to light that these two were Espiria's parents. They had reason to suspect that either she or Asmond's Eevee could be their child that was stolen from them years ago. 

     After that incident they had left the forest and established themselves down here further away from the Draconids territory. It had taken them a couple of years to establish individual territories and they had just recently begun to conceive a new egg. The individual territories were more or less the same idea he had of having a backup location, in the event of them losing one.

     Pokemon, he soon realized, didn't raise their children like Humans. They didn't raise them to be indoctrinated and tied down to their families forever. They didn't raise them to spend time with them and form bonds. Pokemon had children almost exclusively to either carry on their genetics or to add to the strength of their territory or community, assuming that they were the kind of Pokemon that formed communities. 

     Despite having the ability to think and reason on a level similar to Humans, Pokemon were still very much creatures of instinct and, considering this, Asmond was actually kind of impressed that these two had come up with such a plan.

     During their discussion, Asmond explained to them the way Espiria had been born and his hypothesis about why this was the case. They were clearly stunned by this revelation as they had never heard of such a thing occurring. Asmond, however, was more curious about how Pokemon had eggs. Never, during any of the experiences he had with Pokemon, had he ever seen any genitalia on any of them.

     'How can they reproduce without genitals?' He had to know and he thought that this was as good a time as any to try and find out. The two evolved Pokemon informed him that they just kind of knew how to do it once they had evolved. This, of course, wasn't too surprising, since it lined up with the fact that they were more instinctive and intuitive. 

     The process, on the other hand, was a bit surprising as it turned out that creating a Pokemon egg was actually a kind of Pokemon Combo Move. Both would be parents needed to condense evolutionary energy into their bodies and then take a portion of their own power and insert it into that condensed energy. Once the condensate had obtained both enough evolutionary energy and power from the parent, the two parents would then activate their egg making ability at the same time and at the same location. As long as the accuracy wasn't too far off the two balls of condensed energy would attract one another and fuse together and eventually form an egg that would hatch into an unevolved offspring of the two parents. Due to the sacrificing of some of their powers, this process left the parents temporarily weakened, until they could recover their lost power. 

This revelation was like an absolute bombshell to Asmond. The way they had described the energies was clearly a result of their instinctive perception of these facts. They didn't have the kind of technical understanding that he did. Unlike these two, Asmond knew about natural energy already and he had assumed that a Pokemon's evolution had something to do with it. Now, however, he had just been told explicitly, by a Pokemon who had already gone through the process no less, that evolution energy and the energy that powered their abilities were two distinct entities.

He had already hypothesized that natural energy is what gave Pokemon access to their abilities and that their biological compositions were fine tuned to use very specific abilities, thus limiting the variety of abilities they could use. 

     Humans, on the other hand, had no such biological advantage and as such couldn't even use natural energy at all, unless the ambient energy levels of the entire planet were pushed past a certain limit and those Humans also had to possess a decent control over psychic energy, as a prerequisite. 

     This new information, however, made him think of another time in the Pokemon history that Kyogre and Groudon had awakened. The day when Sootopolis was created, a giant meteor had crashed to the ground in that location. This meteor apparently had brought along with it a vast amount of Primal Energy that caused the entire planet to be flooded with it. This separate occurrence, of those two's rampage, was actually what had motivated him to word his wish the way he had. 

     Asmond had already rejected the idea that he was in that time because Sootopolis, despite being far away, was still on the same continent and thus it was likely something the entire continent would be aware of when it happened. The concept of Primal Energy, though, made him think. If those two had rampaged over the world being flooded with natural energy, because it was the source of their strength, what was it about Primal energy that would draw a similar reaction from them.

      The answer, of course, was obvious. Evolution! Those two were legendary existences and so who was to say how many of the ordinary Pokemon rules applied to them and how many didn't. If they could obtain enough Primal Energy, could they evolve into something even more terrifying. Or perhaps the requirements, for Pokemon of their monstrous levels of strength, to produce offspring were unimaginably high and even higher than that because they would have to do it by themselves. 

     Asmond wasn't certain what their motivations could've been but he was certain that Primal Energy was what powered Pokemon evolutions and Natural Energy was what powered their abilities. This would explain why only evolved Pokemon could procreate, since their pre-evolved biology probably only allowed for the acquired Primal Energy to be used for evolution. This could be nature's way of preventing unfit Pokemon from polluting the gene pool with weaklings that would only serve as prey for other weaklings of stronger species. This would also explain why humans couldn't access this energy either, since they had no need for egg making nor did they Evolve.

     After Espiria's parents had made sure that their child was safe and would be able to survive here with Asmond, they had started to leave but Asmond still had something he wanted to ask them.

     "Hey, you guys wouldn't be interested in making a deal would you?"

     Espiria's parents, who had just turned to leave, looked back at Asmond questioningly. "Vaporeon"

     "Well, it occurs to me that you care very much about whether your children are strong enough to survive as, of course, any parent would be. However, you two have seen how difficult this can be and if my parents had been hungry instead of annoyed at my screaming then the egg that eventually became Espiria wouldn't have hatched and Espiria wouldn't be here today. I'm not saying that you're not capable but there's always someone stronger out there and, as you two have seen through your attempts to procreate, cooperating with others can often lead to results simply not achievable by oneself.

     "With that being said, I'd like to explain part of my plans for my team of Pokemon. Espiria plays a fairly large part in them, because I'm going to continue training her until I feel she can function as a fully independent Pokemon Trainer. That's not to say that we will be operating separately but we will eventually have two teams. Her team and my team. My team will mostly consist of brute strength powerhouses while her team will consist entirely of differently evolved Eevees, who are trained to be swift, evasive, and accurate.

     "Whenever I leave here, in a little less than a year to head east, I'll leave Jolteon here and make this his territory. That's assuming that Eevee has evolved by then, if not we'll wait awhile. You three can cooperate together and help each other hold your territories, so that you know the bordering territories are occupied by friendlies.

     "Now the deal part is, if you are willing to let me have your next egg, then I can assure you that, not only will your child be born the same way Espiria was and undergo my special training, but that child will have the support and protection of my entire team and will be working right alongside Espiria. On top of that, when I inevitably return to this place to keep tabs on Jolteon and his progress, if something has happened and any of you has lost their territory, I'll put mine and Espiria's entire teams to the task of getting it back for you.

     "Of course, as you may have already guessed, since my plan is to have Espiria have an entire team of differently evolved Eevees, I'll probably ask you for more eggs in the future and you're not wrong. However, I'll save that for when you're ready and for after you've already had time to experience the benefits of working with me. So what do you think?"

       He had told Espiria about many of the Pokemon he had his eyes on but not all of them and he certainly had never mentioned anything about making her a trainer. As such, all of his Pokemon were currently looking at him with surprised expressions, while Leafeon and Vaporeon turned to look at one another.

     Espiria's parents began discussing his offer quietly, after walking a few steps away and sitting down next to each other. Espiria was obviously happy to meet her parents and was also happy they could get along and live next to each other but at the end of the day their reunion wasn't anywhere near as dramatic as what one would expect from a similar encounter amongst humans.

     From what Asmond had experienced, Pokemon definitely had emotions but they were much more subdued than the rash and dramatic ways that Humans expressed themselves. It really wasn't hard for most Humans to experience intense emotions and to react to those emotions intensely. For Pokemon, however, most of their emotions seemed to be comparable to a person walking outside on a beautiful day and feeling like it was going to be a good day.

    Such an occurrence typically isn't very powerful but it's still a mildly good feeling and that level seemed to be about where most of the emotions his Pokemon had displayed were at. Espiria could be a bit more emotional than the others, if she wanted to, but then she had lived around Humans her entire life, until a couple of months ago.

     Whenever her parents finished their discussion, they returned to where they had been sitting and explained their decision.

     *They've said that they want you to train them as well and, if they show any visible improvement by the time they're ready to make the egg, then they'll let you visit the egg as often as needed to make sure that it's born into its altered state. Once it's born, you can continue to visit and train it, until you leave for the east. If they feel like its progress is sufficient on that day, then they'll allow you to take it with you and will consider allowing you to take other eggs.*

     *Hahaha, wonderful! This is more than sufficient. I'll get those two powered up in no time.*

     "Leafeon, Vaporeon, I thank for seriously considering my request and, if you don't mind, I'll accompany you back to your territories and begin your training immediately."

     *They've just agreed to take you there and also I'm quite happy that we get to visit my parents territories. This should be interesting.*

     "Agreed, Espiria! Alright, team, let's go! We're going to visit these guy's territories and give them some pointers on their training. Make sure you're on your best behavior as I don't want you causing trouble for our hosts, alright?"

     Everyone gave their approval and they all did their training on the go, before allowing the Night Guard to finally get some sleep. After two days of traveling next to the beach, they finally arrived at Vaporeon's territory and were given a short description of how large it was and its various resources.

     After their brief tour, Asmond got down to business and began training Vaporeon on how to increase his strength. He, of course, stressed how important it was to always have at least one person guarding you, while training, even if you're inside your own territory. It was this advice that led him to another piece of advice, which was for each of them to set up a permanent residence closer to each other's territories so that they would have less distance to travel when wanting to train.

     Asmond and his team spent five days in Vaporeon's territory both training and building him a house. Asmond figured that building them both houses would sweeten the deal a bit, when it came time for them to make a decision regarding making him more eggs. The actual construction of these houses though went by a lot faster. Not only because these were smaller but also because Leafeon's Vine Manipulation was leaps and bounds above Seedot's.

     After completing Vaporeon's house and confirming he understood all of his training, they spent four days in Leafeon's territory going through the same motions. Before they departed, Leafeon told them of a location where they might find a family of Raichus. Whether or not they would have a child with them or not she didn't know but as long as there was a possibility Asmond would give it a go.

     So, in hopes of finding a Pichu to join their team, they set off on the scenic route back to their territory.